is there an open source way to recover deleted files from Android Internal Storage?

Zak , 5 months ago

First of all, I hope you have root. File recovery requires direct access to storage, and that’s not possible without root. Unlocking the bootloader to gain root erases encryption keys, which will make previously deleted files unrecoverable.

I’m a little surprised a quick web search doesn’t find an Android port of PhotoRec.

I just tested DiskDigger on a device running LineageOS 20 (Android 13), and it did not find any recoverable files with a full storage scan even though I deleted several jpegs immediately before running it. The non-root deleted photos scan did find some images, but that won’t help you with audio files.

jackpot OP , 5 months ago

qait how do i use photorec on android

jackpot OP , 5 months ago

is diskdigger foss?

Zak , 5 months ago

It is not, and it’s also unlikely to work based on my recent test.

thebardingreen , 5 months ago

Can you mount the internal storage to a Linux machine, dd it to a .img file and try the usual data recovery tricks?

andreafortuna.org/…/android-forensics-imaging-and…

EDIT: Apparently, you don’t need dd. adb pull can do it.

adb pull /dev/block/mmcblk0 mmcblk0.img

brokenlcd , 5 months ago

That only works if the phone doesnt have disk encryption turned on since at the low level recovery tools work at an encrypted disk basically looks like gibberish; and since most phones nowdays have that option enabled by factory; i don’t think it will give any results

jackpot OP , 5 months ago

i use graphene too

brokenlcd , 5 months ago

From what i understood on graphene there is file based encryption instead of block based (whole partition is encrypted) to allow each user profile to have different keys; this is how it’s written on the site

(If i misunderstood what you where trying to tell me; i’m sorry, english isn’t my first language and i wasnt able to understand if you meant to say it as a specification or as a “oh, you use graphene as well”)